Qualla: Cave of Altxerri

Cave of Altxerri: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fifty-three bison. Six reindeer. Four deer, four goats. Three horses, three aurochs. Two saiga antelope -- a species now found only on the steppes of Central Asia. A wolverine, a fox, a hare, a bird. The Cave of Altxerri, sealed to the public and hidden in the municipality of Aya in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, holds one of the largest collections of rock engravings in the Franco-Cantabrian region. Its upper gallery, known as Altxerri B, contains what a 2013 study identified as the oldest stone paintings in Europe, estimated at 39,000 years old.

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cave of Altxerri: An Ice Age Menagerie

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cave contains approximately 120 engravings, 92 of which depict animals. The artists worked during the Upper Magdalenian period, at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, etching their subjects into the rock walls with a realism characteristic of the Franco-Cantabrian School. Bison...

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cave of Altxerri: Europe's Oldest Paintings

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2013, researchers dated the paintings in the upper gallery, Altxerri B, to approximately 39,000 years ago, placing them in the Aurignacian period. This made them the oldest known stone paintings in Europe, challenging the primacy of France's Chauvet Cave. The discovery pushed ...

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cave of Altxerri: Sealed and Sacred

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 4.0. Altxerri is closed to the public. The decision to seal the cave reflects hard lessons learned from other prehistoric sites, where tourism degraded fragile cave environments. In 2008, the cave was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of a group of 17 caves in northern Spa...

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 4.0